The End Does Not Come Swiftly
by debussy88
Summary: Two-shot drabble. Lisa used to be human. Ianto won't get over what happened as easily as he would like everyone to believe. And he can't even bring himself to care anymore.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter: **1/2  
**Summary**: Two-shot, Ianto centered, cyberwoman

The end does not come swiftly for any of them. Least of all Ianto.  
They fight with anything they can get their hands on- handguns, scalpels, an open flame... and in the midst of all of that is someone whom they thought they could trust, desperately begging them to have mercy on the woman he loves. Owen would like to say that Ianto put up a damn good fight when everything came out. But the truth is, he was so blinded by emotion that he didn't nearly live up to his genius.

To Ianto's credit, before everything began to spiral out of control, where everything became a life or death decision, the office boy did hide Lisa right under Torchwood's nose for nearly eight months. Ianto hid her in their own base. But his whole strategy consisted of keeping her existence a secret. Once they knew, everything went to hell. His chess game fell apart. He only had bargaining chips, desperate moves that the cruel opposition saw through instantly, and then obliterated. After the carnage, Ianto still cannot see any justifiable reason for they have done. And what they tried to do.

The start is hard to pinpoint. No one who actually matters knows where it all started. Except, of course, Ianto- still invisible. No-one asks him. No one questions why he did it. No-one even thinks to talk to him about how his life systematically fell apart, leaving only a shattered pile of jagged edges. He is solely defined by varied levels of pain. That pretty stained glass that used to fill a shining steel frame is broken.

He is just a convenient story to tell future employees, that's all. A story with a black and white conflict, good guys and bad guys. The obtuse, arrogant, reckless egomaniacs being Torchwood One. And the moral, of course. Can't forget that. The _lesson_. Aliens will exploit every single human weakness they can find. According to Jack and the rest of the team, everyone has learned it but him.

The name will be taboo from now on, which Ianto knows is one of their many mistakes. He won't point it out. Let future generations of Torchwood fight for their souls, like he has had too, all because Torchwood didn't keep sufficient records of the threat. It's One all over again.

For now, Ianto still gets the worst of everything. He's still alive, and inclusively, he is still an employee of Torchwood. That... well, that's just because Harkness doesn't want another dark bloodstain on his record. All of them are swearing to pay more attention to him this time too, to help him. While they're busy making promises to each other, he is still treated like a story.

The team only knows bits and pieces of the plot.

Gwen is the shallowest. The most inexperienced player, and she can be damned selfish at times. She can't see an inch past his facade of professionalism. She refuses to, because she doesn't think she can deal with seeing him as an actual person. She has no idea of his true emotions; only that after her first alien murder, he so obviously felt something. So much for empathy. For all Ianto cares, she can go to hell.

Tosh is good. Right to the soul, she's pure. It makes Ianto want to cry for how Torchwood has damaged her. Still, although she may be the most intelligent woman he has ever met, she has absolutely no idea how to deal with people. At times, he is the same way, connecting to technology more than actual coworkers.

This time is different than anything else though. He is indifferent to Tosh for a few weeks, and then he realizes that even though she doesn't understand, she sees him. She really sees him. He starts to answer the door when he knows that she is the one knocking so insistently. The bigger achievement: he gets off the couch.

Owen had been there since the very beginning of Ianto's descent into hell. The doctor literally refused to leave.

Owen was at the flat, camped out outside the door when he was woken up by the sound of a priceless glass vase shattering.

Ianto had woken up at midnight and tried to destroy the place. It was two days after... It had been two days since... Ianto had completely forgotten about the doctor. He woke up in the middle of the night, shaking, and just lost it. He couldn't see her possessions anymore. They were the origins of the black stain that was spreading out across what was going to be their home. He really just... He fell apart.

Owen heard the glass break, and proceeded to kick down the door (breaking his deadlock in the process, that bastard) when Ianto didn't respond to his yelling. The Torchwood medic got in just in time to prevent Ianto from attempting to incinerate his engagement ring. He fought Ianto to stillness. And then stayed as Ianto realized what he was doing. And began to cry. From that night on, Owen was the only one who understood anything at all about his and Lisa's relationship. He had been there since the very beginning of Ianto's descent into hell.

And Owen didn't leave him.

For three weeks, Ianto doesn't see the point to living at all. It's not just about Lisa. His thoughts jump from one question to another, questions with no apparent connection, even as he attempts to lose himself in a quagmire of nothingness. He's sinking through his own mind. He can't prevent the "what-if's?" from coming. They arrive in his mind twenty-four hours a day, like little bats, just looking for a place to roost for the winter. He hates them.

He soon realizes that every question he doesn't confront immediately stays in his head. The black cloud of bats is brought to his attention when he reflexively reacts to... It wasn't willingly. Never willingly.

He doesn't want to muddle through his world this way. He is lost.

He's learned this before. The only way he can get some semblance of sanity from his life is to find a solid ground from which to work from. He never thought it would happen. He was tormented in his childhood with those lightning stabs- always what he didn't understand. He never knew what it was that drove him, always, to discover more, unravel the mysteries, the politics, the secrets.

Eventually he realizes that there are things even his parents don't know. He sees things, thing that they don't see. Things that are important. And no one else notices. He doesn't get it. He wants to work out what they mean, connecting the dots in his mind until he can see the entire picture, not just little bits and pieces.

It's curiosity that drives him now. With every little statement he catches, those that seem to have something more behind them, he wants to know where they lead.

He grows up. He goes to high school, and then college, with a perfect 5.0 GPA because for years he has been single-mindedly pursuing his own education. At Uni, he is officially trying to achieve a master's in engineering and a minor in French, but when he isn't studying, he is either reading or traveling. In his free time, he looks at everything he can get his hands on. Literature, military tactics, ancient history, philosophy, government. Conspiracy theories. He finds most of them ridiculous and entertaining and doesn't believe a word of it.

Some are intriguing, but he knows that no matter how interesting, his is not a world where these things are reality. They still catch his imagination. One in particular, one that he doesn't believe in for a second, but wishes was true. A secret organization. Extraterrestrials. Learning from alien technology. It sends a thrill through him... but then... he's lived in Cardiff his whole life, and never noticed anything of the sort. And he would have noticed.

He graduates again, and reluctantly moves to London in search of a career. He doubts he'll find one worth his time. All he wants to do is continue his life's work. There is so much more he can learn. The questions still find him, but no longer torment him. His curiosity is alive and well.

Then he discovers Torchwood. A living, breathing section of the government. Real. And his problems got a whole lot more surreal.

The moment his unconscious mind manages to trigger the Retcon, his memories break through like a tidal wave. And with them, an attack of questions that take hold of him with more insistence than ever before.

He is in shock. Awe. There is not even the smallest thought of letting this discovery lie. Why would he?

The event in itself is not too significant; in light of the other truths he is now privy too. A dark alley, a shadow. A shadow that is soon proven not to be a shadow, but a ferocious 6ft tall alien, who is not all that opposed to attacking an innocent passerby. He wakes up in the hospital, which is terrifying enough in itself. They flash a badge that he guesses is fake (he's never heard about Cardiff Special Ops before), but he memorizes the ID number anyway. He lies when they question him. No matter what he says, he will remember every detail of that night for the rest of his life.

They buy every word of it, and he goes home that night with minor injuries and stays up for the next 24 hours trying to figure out exactly what is going on. He hacks into London's police database. He's never broken the law before. It's not that hard. The only reference he can find at all to the ID number he memorized is in a military file.  
He spends the next twenty minutes hacking into that too. He is so going to jail.

Nevertheless, he writes down the address he has painstakingly uncovered, and visits Canary Wharf the next day.

The first time he finds them, it is exactly two days after he was confined to the hospital, and he walks directly into Torchwood One's headquarters. He is arrested, interrogated, keeps remarkable composure, and is then Ret-conned following standard procedure.

Long story short, the second time he finds Torchwood London, he ends up as an employee by the end of the day.

He loves it from the very first day. Everything. The sense of adventure, the few answers that are the only ones important to him now. He abandons his life's work, and devotes himself to learning all there is to learn from what information he has access too. As well as learning from a lot of information he doesn't technically have clearance for. He is much more careful with those hacks. Yvonne and her lackeys are ruthless, but very good at tracking people down. If they knew what he was doing, he wouldn't only be out of a job; he would likely be persecuted for it. A small part of his mind remembers, and adds the knowledge of 'how to evade Torchwood' to his mental repertoire.

His job has some random official title, but unofficially, he ties together everything they've been doing in R and D. He goes on retrieval missions for alien technology, and because of this, gains some basic weapons training. But he never once opens fire in the field. He's never even drawn his standard hand gun. He remembers almost everything he ever reads, and is soon put in charge in archiving artifacts, after gleaning everything he can from them and recording it. For almost two years, this is his life.

One day, it disappears. The day he meets Lisa, every single question in his mind vanishes. He falls in love.

It sounds so simple. His concern for himself is replaced by concern for her. He's a teenager again, nervous about asking her out on a date.

He's always been a bit liberal in his sexuality. He never told his parents he was bi. They wouldn't have understood him. And as long as he keeps it in his own mind, he still has that closeness with them, and they will never have trouble accepting him. But this is everything he never knew he wanted. He dreams of normality with her. A house and a wedding, and maybe, eventually, children. He is shocked that the thought of children doesn't have him running out the door.

Suddenly, Lisa is everything to him. He can't imagine a life without her. Then he gets to know her. And he discovers what long lasting love means. Forever. He wants forever with her.

They move in together. That surprises him too, but this time there is a stunning bout of apprehension, and this spurns their first major row, with Lisa shouting and slamming the door behind her.

Her death is similar to that first fight. Confusion and despair, and he loves through his anxiety and over thought all over again. But that last time she was still important to him. Lisa's emotions and actions were still important to him, there at the edge of his mind. How could he repair their relationship?

After Lisa is mutilated and they are both destroyed by Torchwood, Ianto doesn't care about anything. Not even him. Not even her.

His statements about what happened are clinical and detached. He doesn't understand how _Gwen_ doesn't understand that he knows Lisa is dead, and isn't afraid to say so. Ianto never really was one for denial, but Gwen looks at him with disgust and pity and it makes everything so much harder.

Though Ianto is blunt about some things, which doesn't mean he isn't grieving, he is very careful to skirt around the details. He doesn't want to think about the circumstances surrounding Lisa's death. He doesn't want to picture her covered in blood. He doesn't want to see that metal in his nightmares, equating her with the monsters that reduced his life to a desperate, hopeless, bereft pursuit of peace.

He is so broken that he has nothing he can do for the world anymore.

The breakdown has been coming for a while now, he thinks vaguely.

Eventually, despite the betrayal and anger and the terrible choices they all have to make... it does end. In death for everyone. That is finality.  
The scene is laid out in a previously insignificant basement, with two corpses torn apart on the cement floor. And a third man as well, just as dead, even though he can still cry. The massacre is surrounded with a tinge of bitterness.

But the scene unfreezes, to everyone's consternation and horror and fear, because life does not have a solid beginning and end. And there is no joy in watching Ianto fall to his knees, and mourn the murder of who he thought was his Lisa.


	2. Chapter 2

Eight months. His hell exists solidly in reality for eight months.

Eight months during which infamous history is made in the Battle of Canary Wharf, during which Ianto tries, tries so hard to save her.

Eight months. He is suspended from Torchwood Three and wishes he had been executed or Ret-conned rather than live through this. Then, possibly the only person who can reach him does and yanks Ianto back from the edge. Forcefully.

The more interesting story is the one that comes months after, where, through some twisted form of destiny, Ianto falls in love again. With an outspoken, gorgeous man, whose brash exterior hides his intense passions and the pain that he carries every day. He is beaten down by it. The first moment Ianto sees the brokenness in his eyes, he is hit by an overwhelming relief and dizzying happiness.

_I'm not the only one._

It was the man's past. A past he point-blank refuses to elaborate on.  
A past that Ianto knows is as war-torn as his, which has turned them both to desperation and loneliness. It's a past he doesn't want to remember.

And Ianto understands this about him. He understands that man better than anyone else.

His past is as much a mystery as who Ianto really is. But no one knows Ianto keeps secrets. So they don't bother to ask him. No-one cares enough to break down his barriers.

Then Ianto learns something extraordinary, and adds 'impossible' to the list of adjectives that describes his Jack. He wants to cry when he realizes that this beautiful man has been broken every few decades, and has then been rebuilt through those who are colleagues, and who gradually, against his will, become friends and partners.

Despite his internal arguments and rationalizations, it eventually dawns on Ianto that what he so desperately wants is to fix this man. Ianto wants to be the one by his side, always, so he can take away the pain, and put the broken pieces back together.

The absolution, when it finally comes, is such an overwhelming relief that they can't help but fall into each other. With every trial they go through as a pair, it only brings them closer together, despite the pain and the fear.

What first drew Ianto towards him was the despairing hopelessness he had towards ever finding anyone to love again. He's not like Gwen. He can't just go out into the world and find someone and hide everything from them. Well… he could. It's not like he can't see being with someone who doesn't know about Torchwood. After all, there are only five people who do, including him. And if there's one thing Ianto is good at, it's hiding secrets. He doesn't do it halfway. The lie is always perfect.

But hiding that much would kill him. And he knows, with Torchwood, eventually his significant other would find out.

He can't control everything. That, at least, he knows is true. Ever since those eight months.

And then it's the way he smiles, the way he charms his way into the hearts of his team. It's the way he leads them, not hiding any faults, not pretending any virtues, not lying about the horror of the job. Or the honor.

The thing Ianto loves most about him is impossible to name. They are both survivors. The way they find each other is a miracle he doesn't recognize at first.  
And this impossible person, whom Ianto falls in love with, (for the second time in his life) is named Jack Harkness. He can almost taste the irony.

The story goes on for a few too-short years, and then ends. In the end, Ianto's life is overshadowed by a different story. A story of love and family, sacrifice and duty. That is all that is remembered of him on Earth. But light-years away, on an alien planet, the broken heart of _his Jack_ carries Ianto's true memory for far longer than he ever expected to be remembered.


End file.
